Those are good suggestions. I can tell you know what you are talking about.
However, I am more screwed than that.
I do have one of those cool USB external drive enclosures, but that server was the only
linux system I have running at the moment. Would have to install some version of
linux on one of my spare desktops in order to get a system that would be able to
read the ext3 filesystem or clone the drive. (If it is still ok...)
It will be easier to just slap together my backup hardware, and see if the drive will
boot on it. The data recovery is no issue as that is all backed up.
I just REALLY wanted a clone of that entire HDD that would boot that antique hardware.
Should have made that years ago.....
With the IDE adapter apparently dead, booting off a usb drive would do me no good.
Same as my cool linux Startup floppy. System will boot up fine off that, but there is no HDD
with a kernel to load...
The board does have a couple USB 1.1 ports, but no point in trying to boot off there if
the BIOS is not finding any IDE drives.....
Those solutions are great if your boot partition or MBR or grub gets all screwed up.
Not so much in this case.
If the BIOS/motherboard cant see the drive at POST, nothing on USB or floppy will see it either.
I should probably just let this system go, but I am sort of attached to it.....
Until about 5 years ago, I was running stuff on this thing that made me money.
It paid for about 1/3rd of my house. The UT servers on it were just a hobby, and something
for the server to do while it waited for other traffic.
I could put the UT servers back up on any of several other old winblows desktops I got here quickly, but haven't
decided yet if it is even worth the effort. Or which of my extra machines I would use.